Dancing through time

Virginie Mécène’s journey with the Martha Graham Dance Company is a testament to her dedication and passion for dance. With a career that spans decades, she has played pivotal roles as a dancer, choreographer, and educator, contributing significantly to the preservation and evolution of Graham’s legacy. Recently, her impact was highlighted in our new story, captured by photographer Kotaro Kawashima and styled by Sho Ishikura, further showcasing her enduring influence in the world of dance.

hube: Your journey with the Martha Graham Dance Company has been extensive. Can you share a pivotal moment that significantly shaped your career as a dancer and choreographer?

Virginie Mécène: I am not sure I had one specific pivotal point in my career, but certain times shaped it in different ways. The first was when I joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1994. This definitely validated the direction of my dance career. In the mid-nineties, I was dancing with two different dance companies simultaneously, resulting in an explosion of creativity. Not only was I learning and dancing historic roles in one, but I was also creating new roles in the other. I was dancing with the Martha Graham Dance Company in the afternoon and then with the Buglisi Dance Theatre (at the time called Buglisi/Foreman Dance) in the evening. I remember wearing an oversized jumper that I would put on over my dance clothes to go from one studio to the other, taking the New York City subway from downtown to uptown to jump from one rehearsal to the next. I was touring with both companies, so it was a hectic and demanding time but wonderfully creative. This is the dream of a dancer – to be in demand, and when you are young and eager to dance, the energy keeps renewing.

I was deeply involved with this community of dancers and choreographers, strengthening and magnifying my commitment to this artistic form. In 2000, when the Martha Graham Dance Company suspended all activities due to an internal lawsuit, I was cut off from my dance floor. During that time, I enrolled in acting and singing classes, which enhanced my dancing skills. I also picked up work with another dance company, the Battery Dance Company, with which I travelled extensively to India and around the Baltic Sea. This company was smaller and was performing in smaller venues, allowing for a more direct connection with the community. This enriching cultural experience allowed me to meet and interact with people close to their traditions. We danced on stages of all shapes and sizes, and this experience gave me a different view of the purpose of performing and its impact on the community. Meanwhile, the Martha Graham Dance Company resumed all activities after two years, and I was juggling three different dance companies. I travelled with the three companies all around the globe.

As a choreographer, my work was being put on hold as I was swamped dancing, but as soon as the opportunity arose, I continued to create. When I left the Martha Graham Dance Company in 2006, I became the Director of the Martha Graham School and the Artistic Director of Martha Graham’s second company, Graham 2, and I started choreographing again for the dancers.

h: Graham 2 plays a crucial role in preserving Martha Graham’s legacy. How do you balance honouring tradition while also infusing your unique artistic vision into the company?

VM: The Graham concept is based on individuality, finding and excavating what’s inside us. Graham’s work forces us to tap into our deep ancestral memories and interpret movement in such a way that it comes from within. It is simple yet significant, without moving for the sake of moving and without any decorations.

My understanding of the work and my extended experience dancing it, teaching it, restaging it, and coaching it gives me the freedom to use my own judgement and adjust things as I see fit to maintain the dance’s essence, message, and intent. Everyone is unique, and two dancers who perform the same role will have different approaches according to their energy, physicality, and personality. My role in coaching the dancers is to guide them to the closest intent of that role while preserving their individuality and spontaneity.

Graham 2 is a company of early-career dancers who will eventually bear the torch for the next generations of Graham performers and teachers. So, the sharing of the legacy is significant. Dancers approach the work with youthful energy, and I have to harness it as Graham did with her new dancers to create her work. It is critical to understand where they are in the stage of their artistic development, how I can “shape” them, and what they can bring into the work.

h: You’ve worked in various capacities – as a dancer, choreographer, and educator. How do these different roles influence each other in your creative process?

VM: As a performer, I usually dance in someone else’s work, so I respect that person’s vision and try to embody it as much as possible. Sometimes, it takes research to embody the character, similar to an actor’s character study. Reading about the character or getting closer to it in any way possible is helpful to create that person within you. Reading poetry can also create an internal vision for the work that is aligned with the choreographer’s vision.

As a choreographer, I stick to my own voice. Whether we want it or not, we are always influenced by what we do with others, so while I have my own voice, I might be influenced by what I have done before, and that nourishes my creativity. It may not be obvious, but there are layers of influences that become your own, and there is no other way around it as we build on our experiences. How I weave my experiences makes it my own tapestry. My experience as a performer and a choreographer is enriched and infused through my teaching. I’ve been on stage, staging, and creating things for the stage, so I know what dancers need to learn to project, feel firmly rooted in the ground, use their focus, and pace themselves to perform the work. All those tools are shared. All those experiences are woven into the fabric of my teaching.

I continue learning, too. As teachers, we learn from our students. We figure out how to communicate, pace our information, how dancers receive directives, and how each individual moves. Graham’s work is specific, but mine is also specific because it comes from within me. My choreographic work taps into the same deep personal place and is influenced by my experience as a woman, my French nationality, my American citizenship, and what I learned through my early training, which was multidisciplinary. I practised dances from different cultures, including contemporary and Graham. So, as a result of that, my work can be eclectic. When I choreograph for the Graham 2 dancers or the Martha Graham Dance Company dancers, I keep my own vision and originality because that’s what the technique and the work are about – being oneself. For me, to do a dance that looks like Graham’s would just be a copy and lacking in artistic integrity. Artistic originality is the act of expressing what’s inside of you.

h: Can you tell us about a particular project or performance that challenged you creatively and how you overcame those challenges?

VM: I was once commissioned to choreograph a 25-minute dance to a score already composed with an interpretive characteristic of a specific story. The music was beautiful, but the story for which it was created didn’t resonate with me. Even though I was permitted to go my own way, the music was so evocative of storytelling that I had to create a dance with a storyline, and that was a big challenge: how to choreograph something that would fit music with prominent happenings while interpreting something different than what it was created for. It took a lot of doing and redoing, and there were doubtful moments, but eventually, things started to fall into place. The dance was performed on the Martha Graham Dance Company programme between two iconic Graham works, Appalachian Spring and The Rite of Spring, so the pressure was on, but the result was successful; the dance received great ovations and was performed with live music in several venues in Florida.

Throughout a performing dance career, there were many challenges, one of them being to perform on a floating stage in India. I was touring with the Battery Dance Company in different cities in India, including Kolkata. The stage was built especially for us on a lake, and it was unstable. The choreography required several instances of standing on one leg with the other up in the air, so you can imagine the challenge. Another example was while performing with the Martha Graham Dance Company on a tour in Brazil and Colombia. I was dancing with five men, and each kept getting sick, so the cast lost one dancer each night. There were many lifting sections in the dance called Lament, and each night, as one of the men was incapacitated, we had to reconfigure the dance so that the men who were left could take turns lifting me in the air. The challenge was more for the men than for me, but it was a memorable, challenging occurrence nevertheless.

Of course, how you overcome a challenge depends on the challenge itself, but in those instances, extra concentration and embracing the new challenge create excitement.

h: What inspired your transition from performing to directing and teaching, and how has your perspective on dance evolved through this transition?

VM: I wanted to take a break from being a full-time performer in a company but not stop performing altogether. The reason was that I didn’t want to arrive at a point in my career when I had to stop dancing without knowing what to do next. I needed some room to think. So, when I left the Martha Graham Dance Company, I envisioned teaching Pilates and moving to New Mexico. At that time, the Martha Graham School and Graham 2 Company needed a new direction, and I ended up taking the job and staying in New York. So, in 2007, I suddenly found myself running the Martha Graham School and Graham 2 Company simultaneously. This was huge, and in 2015, my position shifted to focus mainly on the artistic aspect, and letting go of some of the administrative responsibilities was welcome.

Being on the other side gave me a different perspective on dance. It became all about sharing my experience, and things started to pour out of me. Through teaching, I was dancing in a way. 

This transition made me realise how demanding professional dancing is. When you are in it, you just do it because you love it, but it takes tremendous work and sacrifice. People may see this profession as glamorous, but being a professional dancer does not happen only on stage. Like all athletes, it takes years of training, non-stop practice, hours of rehearsals, and a whole lifestyle dedicated to this art. When you are a dancer, it’s all about you – not in a selfish way, but you have to take care of yourself to be able to do what you do, and your whole life is based around it. A dancer is resilient, disciplined, courageous, and hard-working. All this hard work is just to share some magic moments with the audience.

Now, in my position, I see things with different eyes. I appreciate this profession even more as I see how hard the new generations work to fulfil their dreams. I also realised how vast and dedicated the dance community is, including directors, administrators, presenters, stage managers, technicians, and all the personnel needed to support dance. It takes a village.

h: In your opinion, what is the most significant change or trend in contemporary dance over the past decade, and how do you see it impacting future generations of dancers?

VM: Modern dance took its roots throughout the 1920s and ’30s, resulting from an artistic movement that needed changes, a new artistic vision, and a new voice. The artistic community was looking for a new way to express themselves away from aesthetic conformity, and a lot of movement exploration was happening.

We are now in the ’20s, but a hundred years later, and dance has been evolving all the way through. During the last decade, TV shows have embraced dance, and performances have moved beyond the theatre prosceniums to take place in untraditional venues, making the art form more accessible to any audience. During COVID-19, when all the studios were closed, dance spread out throughout social media, allowing all styles and cultures to be shared all around the globe. Whether seen on TV or social media or in public spaces, dance has become much more a part of everybody’s lives.

The new generation is redefining itself again, but this time, it is not rejecting ballet or any other conformed styles but embracing all dance forms while fusing and amalgamating all sorts of style combinations and continuing to innovate. The trend of contemporary dance today is exploring movement without projecting a specific style but internalising the movement’s impetus in such ways that it gives an unexpected or unusual aesthetic, reflecting today’s society’s psyche and emotional state.

The quest to explore, discover, and push the limits of the body’s ability continues, and I am excited to see what the next generation will bring.

h: You’ve had the opportunity to coach many dancers. What qualities do you believe are essential for a dancer to succeed in today’s dance world?

VM: In addition to being open, curious, non-judgemental, committed, and creative, more than ever, dancers of today need to be versatile. That means they need to train in different styles, adding more challenges.

I like to work with dancers who have all of the above qualities and are invested. What I look for is maturity and the ability to process information. Even if what I am asking of them represents a challenge, I expect them to do their homework and return the next day ready to go further. I also expect them to remember the movements and what was said to them so that we can build together.

It is not a one-way thing, however. As the coach, I have to understand and feel the dancer I am working with and go layer by layer to develop physical and dramatic levels of the work. I cannot expect everything at once and need to build those layers over time while trusting and respecting the dancer’s instinct. An exchange between the dancer and me and a balance needs to happen. This creates a deep connection that is essential to work efficiently.

h: How do you approach the reconstruction and staging of historical works, especially those of Martha Graham, to ensure they remain relevant to modern audiences?

VM: The reconstruction of a dance is staying as true as possible to the original choreography. It is done by getting the information that already exists about the dance and putting it back together. Technically, reconstruction is possible when there are enough elements, such as films, music, photos, written descriptions, or even sometimes with the help of people who remember the dance. All these elements give a pretty good idea of what the dance was. Being relevant to today’s audience is inherent to the dance itself, and many of Graham’s historical classic works transcend time.

Whereas reimagining a dance, as I have done for three different lost solos of Martha Graham – Ekstasis, Revolt, and Immigrant – is a much different process than reconstructing; it is rechoreographing a dance. There was very little information about the three dances, which was insufficient to reconstruct them. They needed to be reinvented from beginning to end. I took inspiration from these spare elements and choreographed a new work for each. I wanted each dance to be relevant to today’s audience by their theme, which was already relevant, and with my choreography. So, I didn’t use any Graham vocabulary but my own. I also used the musical support of two contemporary composers for two solos, contributing to the dances’ re-actualisation.

What makes these dances relevant to today’s audience is my vision for the dance and the movements I created for it, as I am a person of today.

h: Your works often explore profound themes and emotions. Can you share your process of translating such abstract concepts into choreography?

VM: I choreographed a trio called Unum, which means “one,” and I wanted to go to the deepest of the dancer’s biological expression by capturing the response of their breath affected by the movements I created. To do so, I collaborated with interactive composer Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi and utilised his concept of capturing data from the dancer’s breath during the dance. The process required the dancers to wear a sensory device around their chest and to dance the dance I choreographed without music. All the data from the action of their ribcage as they breathed were collected and translated into sounds that created the music for the dance. That way, the musical support for the choreography became the sound of the physiological response of the dancers as they breathed through the dance. So, the idea of being “one” is expressed through the fundamental action of breathing we all share as we go through life.

For one of the solos I reimagined, Ekstasis, I explored with the dancer moving from the deepest of our visceral ancestral memory. I shared multiple imageries with the dancer I worked with to give depth to the movement and go to extreme oppositional pulls within the body, being as grounded as possible while extending off-centre as much as possible, deepening and repeating over and over again slowly, to find new dimensions and new depth in the body, shifting into space with texture. Through this process, I wanted to extract the movement’s energy. Like Chinese calligraphy, where a simple line is rich in spiritual experience and texture, the dance is energy in motion, intriguing, moving, and captivating the audience in a meditative suspension of time.

h: What advice would you give to young choreographers and dancers who are just starting their careers in the competitive world of contemporary dance?

VM: If you want to do it, you’ve got to do it 300%. Don’t wait for someone to give you what you want; you cannot count on that. No one will come to you and give you your dream on a silver plate; you need to go get it. Find out how the people who inspire you got to where they are even as your journey will be different from theirs, as everybody’s journey is. Notice their energy and determination to succeed. Get your inspiration from different sources, but follow your instinct.

If your goal changes along the way, change your route and pattern. If you cannot turn right, turn left, and eventually, you’ll reach your goal anyway. Don’t let anyone discourage you. Only you can decide whether to keep going or stop. It is great to dance or choreograph for pleasure, but remember that if you want to make a professional career out of it, inform yourself about the nature of the business and how you can make it your business.

Your job as a professional dancer is like a paintbrush; you bring to life the work that a choreographer is creating with you.

Talent VIRGINIE MECENE
Photography by KOTARO KAWASHIMA
Stylist SHO ISHIKURA
Makeup HIROTO YAMAUCHI
Hair REI KAWAUCHI
Photo assistants BRETT ROSS and JAKE SHEPHERD
Styling assistant MAHO KUNITOMO
SPECIAL THANKS TO SMASHBOX STUDIOS